


Oathkeeper

by ofshadowsandstars



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Catelyn is Nice to Jon, F/M, Jon Snow is a Stark, Jon-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, kind of, what-if fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 21:28:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8029501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofshadowsandstars/pseuds/ofshadowsandstars
Summary: "And all because I couldn't love a motherless child."But what if Catelyn had kept her promise to the Seven? What if she had asked Ned to legitimize Jon Snow and loved him like a son and raised him along with the other Stark children as one of them. How different would the story have been? How similar would it have been?





	Oathkeeper

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: this is my first GoT fic. I'm always open to constructive criticism.

Ned had fallen asleep at his desk. 

This was something of an unprecedented situation for Catelyn. She knew her husband to be honorable, fair, and strong, but he didn’t seem the type to fall asleep at his own desk. Wondering what to do, Catelyn was hovering at his side, unsure whether she should wake him or leave him be.

“It’s the stress,” a voice said from the doorway. Cat turned, perhaps a bit hastily. It was Old Nan, holding baby Robb in her arms. “Between getting everything sorted over here and the boy’s illness, Lord Eddard is the picture of worry. Best let him sleep.”

Cat had stopped paying attention when Nan mentioned illness. “Is something wrong with Robb?” she asked, terrified for her son. “I was with him not an hour ago-”

“No, no,” Nan shook her head and tilted her arms so Catelyn could see her sleeping son. “I meant the other boy. Snow. What did they end up calling him?”

“Jon,” Catelyn said quietly, making an effort not to look at her husband, not even for a second. “I don’t know if it’s for Jonnel Stark or Jon Arryn, but that’s the bastard’s name.”

Nan  _ hmm _ ed. “Either way, the bastard’s got the pox.” She put emphasis on  _ bastard _ , the faintest edge of contempt towards Catelyn in her voice. Perhaps it was easier to see a child as a child when you had raised so many that were not yours.

The pox wasn’t usually too bad, in adults at least. But in infants...Petyr had told her about a woman in the kitchens whose baby girl died of the pox. It had sounded awful. But if it got Ned’s bastard out of the way, how bad could it be?

Catelyn could imagine the mortified look on Lysa’s face had she heard her sister’s thoughts.  _ He’s just an innocent boy, Cat! He hasn’t a mother to love him, and you’d take him away from his father, too? _

“Lord Eddard had meant to sit with the boy once he finished his paperwork,” Old Nan added, knocking Catelyn out of her thoughts. “Maester Luwin said he’ll live if he survives the night, but it’ll be a long night.”

“So you’re going to sit with him,” Catelyn finished.

“No.”

“The Maester, then?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

Catelyn scoffed, realizing what the old woman was insinuating. “He’s not my child, Nan. Why should I care if he lives or dies?”

Old Nan met Catelyn’s eyes with a hard, almost angry glare. “Because your husband does.” Catelyn tried to ignore the guilt that momentarily burned in her gut. “I’ll be in the nursery with Robb,” Nan added, bringing Cat back to the present. “I’ve moved a spare cradle into Lyanna’s old room. You’ll find Jon Snow in there.” Curtsying slightly, Old Nan turned and left the solar, humming lightly to Robb.

Catelyn looked back and forth between her husband and the empty doorway several times before making up her mind and running out into the hallway to catch up to Old Nan. “Remind me which one is Lyanna’s old room?” she asked, breathing heavily from her sprint down the castle corridor.

“It’s the one whose door is always shut,” was all she said before walking off towards the nursery.

Cat found the room with much more ease than she thought she would. While Ned had been off fighting in the war, when it had just been Cat and a pregnant belly and the servants, she had spent many hours wandering the halls of Winterfell, trying to become familiar with it, to make it home. She had spent more time in the room that had once been Brandon’s than she would care to admit, but she remembered the few times she stumbled into Lyanna’s room. It had not had an inhabitant for several years, but everything was still perfect and clean, as if holding its breath, waiting for the beauty of Winterfell to come home. Cat had shared that sentiment with the septa, whose reply had been to tell her that the next beauty of Winterfell could have the room. Catelyn wasn’t sure if she wanted a daughter yet. Not when Lyanna’s ghost was still haunting the halls of Winterfell.

She didn’t remember the room being so small. Of course, it was known that Lyanna Stark had preferred being out riding to being a lady, but even Petyr had been given a larger room. Or perhaps it was the cradle in the middle of the room that made it seem smaller. Cat approached it slowly, very aware of the fact that she was alone in a room with her husband’s bastard for the first time. 

_ He’s sick _ , a voice in her head whispered,  _ if he were to stop breathing, no one would question it twice. Some babes just don’t survive the night.  _ The voice sounded strangely like Petyr. 

_ If you kill this boy, the gods will punish you for sure _ , another voice argued. This one sounded like Lysa. 

_ But the stain on Eddard Stark’s name will be erased. Get rid of the Snow, and it will all be perfect.  _ Petyr.

_ He’s an innocent babe. It’s not his fault!  _ Lysa.

_ He’s a bastard. And one who won’t leave, at that.  _ Petyr.

_ That doesn’t change- _

Cat was shaken out of her internal argument by a pained cry from the cradle. Acting on mother’s instinct, Catelyn approached the edge, reaching down to touch the boy’s brow. She stopped herself just as her fingers were about to brush his head. This wasn’t her son. She didn’t have to comfort him. It was at that moment, however, that Jon opened his eyes and looked at Cat. They were big brown eyes, the same as Ned’s and Brandon’s and that of every Stark. Well, except Robb. Robb with his dark hair and bright blue eyes.

“Are you trying to mock me?” she murmured, mirroring the baby's curiosity. 

As if he understood, Jon chose that moment to wrinkle up his little face and cry. That same pained, pathetic sound from before. 

_ You know there’s a better chance of him stopping if you do something, _ Lysa’s voice whispered. Cat looked around to make sure there the door was still closed before reaching into the cradle and picking Jon up. He reacted positively to the touch, but kept crying nonetheless. Cat felt his head. He was burning up, the little thing. Ignoring the matter of personal dignity, Cat unwrapped Jon’s swaddle, and he seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Was that all?” Cat asked him. “You were hot and uncomfortable?”

Jon gurgled hoarsely, grabbing the edge of his blanket and stuffing it in his mouth. Catelyn smoothed back the black curls stuck to his head with sweat.

“You’ve got curls just like Robb’s,” she noticed, “I wonder if that’s a trait in Starks. Eddard doesn’t have curls, and I don’t remember seeing them on Brandon or Benjen. Maybe Lyanna had them. Or maybe they’ll go away when you get older. Assuming you live past tonight, that is.” Jon didn’t respond, just blinked at her sleepily despite his painful-sounding ragged breaths. “I don’t know if I want you to live past tonight, Jon Snow,” she admitted. “It would make my life easier, but I don’t know what your father would think. He must have loved your mother something fierce, to bring you here and let you stay. Or maybe he didn’t love your mother. Maybe he just took one look at you and fell in love. That’s how it works sometimes, I hear. I can’t decide which I like less. I think the latter. Because if Ned took one look at you and loved you, then I can say it  _ is _ your fault, at least to myself. But, then again, I don’t know how happy it would really make me to blame things on you and your unfamiliar eyes and your curls.” Catelyn trailed off from there, rocking back and forth slightly while watching Jon’s face as he drifted off to sleep. 

When she was sure he was asleep, Cat put Jon back in the cradle and sat down in the chair next to the hearth. She wasn’t sure how long she watched his tiny chest rise and fall and listened to the rattle in his breath, but she did notice that one of the candles had burned out. When she got up to light a new candle, Catelyn noticed a basket on the floor. Upon closer inspection, it was filled with strips of cloth and sticks of various shapes and sizes. She tested a few. Fairly flexible. Catelyn picked up the basket and shot Jon a look. His face was scrunched up and red, the same way Robb’s got before he woke up to cry. Sure enough, he started crying, and Catelyn set down the basket on what was Lyanna Stark’s bed and went over to pick Jon up. 

As he was rocked gently, Jon Snow’s sobs subsided into teary whimpers. He stuffed a fist in his mouth and clasped her sleeve with the other, trying to pull Catelyn as close as humanly possible.

“I asked the gods to kill you,” Catelyn confessed, “but I forgot that dying would hurt you. But what would be the price for letting you live? We’d have a bastard hanging around Winterfell, a permanent reminder of my husband’s infidelity. Though I suppose it’s arguable whether or not bringing you here was noble or not. Still, I don’t like you. There is a way to remove the shame aspect of it all. I could ask your father to make you a Stark. You could be Robb’s brother for real, and a brother to any other children I have. It would save me shame, though I’m sure most of the North would know the truth.”

The rest of the night went like that. Catelyn would sit with him, making her first ever prayer wheel out of sticks, cloth, and a few other things in Lyanna’s room. Every so often, if Jon fussed or cried, she picked him up, spoke to him softly, and rocked him until he went back to sleep. As Catelyn put the finishing touch on her wheel, the very first ray of sun’s light peeked up over the horizon. Catelyn set down the wheel on the bed, went over to the cradle, and picked up Jon Snow. She felt his forehead. Still warm, but better. The cough that had plagued him for most of the night was gone. He was even feeling well enough to give Cat a tiny smile that she would have missed had she not been watching his face.

“Feeling better, are we, little one?” Cat asked. “You heard my prayers, didn’t you? The Seven told you?” Jon just gurgled at her. His voice was less hoarse, his breath less ragged. Cat sighed, echoing his ghost of a smile. “I made a promise to the gods, and they told you just to be sure I kept it. No helping it now, eh, Jon?”

“No helping what?” Catelyn jumped at the sound of Ned’s voice. She whirled around, nearly hitting Jon in the face with her hair. He didn’t mind, though, and took it as an invitation to tangle his tiny fingers in the redness of it all.

“Nothing,” Catelyn stammered, gently pulling her hair out of Jon’s grip. “Nothing, my lord. I was just thinking aloud.”

Ned gave her a knowing look. He held his arms out and Cat reluctantly handed Jon over. “Feeling better, are we?” he asked his son. Jon didn’t reply, so Ned looked at Catelyn. “Catelyn, were you with him all night?”

Not trusting herself to speak, she nodded.

Ned nodded to the prayer wheel on the bed. “And you made that?”

Another nod.

Cat’s husband stared at her in disbelief. “Why? You’ve no reason to care for him.”

Reasons and excuses tripped on Catelyn’s tongue until she finally blurted, “You should give him a real name.”

Eddard frowned. “He has a name, Catelyn.”

“I meant a proper last name. He’s your son, he shouldn’t be a Snow.”

The furrows in Eddard’s brow deepened. “Catelyn, are you alright? You haven’t spared Jon so much as a glance since he arrived, and after one night with him you want me to make him a Stark?”

“Yes,” Catelyn affirmed, not trusting herself to say anything else. 

Ned spent a moment looking back and forth between Jon and Catelyn before saying, “I’m taking him to Maester Luwin,” decisively and hurrying away. Cat almost followed him, but a wave of exhaustion hit her, so she instead decided to trudge back to her chambers and fell into a deep sleep. 

She dreamed of two boys playing in the courtyard at Winterfell, one with red-brown hair and blue eyes, the other with pretty black curls and eyes like dragonglass. They were both holding wooden swords, working together to fight an imaginary monster. Once the beast was defeated, they ran into a shelter - somewhere Cat couldn’t see from her vantage point - and came back out with a girl in tow each. The boy with blue eyes had the elder of the two girls holding onto his arm. She had the same eyes as him, but her hair was like flame. She walked delicately, putting thought into every action. The girl holding on to the other boy’s hand was small and covered in a fine layer of dust, but she had dark hair and eyes just like him. Upon spotting her, all four children ran up to where Cat was standing, a few of them embracing her, all of them smiling brightly and calling her Mother.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave comments and kudos (but mostly comments)! I'd love to hear what you think!


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